A Birmingham student was killed by her partner during an argument over her leaving hair in a bathtub, a court has heard.

South Korean international relations and sociology student Da In Lee, 22, was murdered by Daniel Jones, 27, at his home on April 8 last year, prosecutor Gordon Aspden said.

Father-of-one Jones, who denies murder, was facing the first day of a trial that is expected to last for a week, at Wolverhampton Crown Court .

Mr Aspden said the pair, who had met at a church in south Birmingham in 2011, had split up the previous month but spent the Easter weekend attempting a reconciliation at Jones’s first-floor flat in Grace Road, Tipton.

The prosecutor said Jones strangled slightly-built, 5ft 3in tall Miss Lee, an ‘intelligent and capable’ Aston University undergraduate who lived at iQ student accommodation at Bath Row in Birmingham city centre, during a heated row.

“Swiftly and violently, it all went wrong,” Mr Aspden said. “By Easter Sunday evening, Da In Lee was dead.”

He summarised a statement given to police by Jones, who fled to Bristol to see his daughter Saskia, now aged two, and ex-partner Stacey Miller after the tragedy.

“He said there had been a petty quarrel over household chores and hair being found in the plughole,” Mr Aspden said.

“They started pushing each other. He said that he’s pushed her and caused her to fall over and had knocked her glasses off.”

By Jones’s account, he then straddled her as she lay on the floor and put his left hand over her mouth as she began to scream.

Mr Aspden added: “He took hold of her around her throat with his right hand and applied pressure to her throat. Her face had gone a purplish blue. He said he had seen some tears welling up in her eyes and two tears rolled down her face.”

Jones told police he did not believe Miss Lee was dead, although he ‘completely lost track of time’ while his hand was on her throat. He described his thought process at the time as ‘really hazy’.

He wrapped her head in red fabric ‘to keep her warm’, he told officers.

Jones, who spent that night at Miss Lee’s student flat in Birmingham after taking her key fob, then caught a train to Bristol where he met ex-partner Miss Miller the next afternoon.

Miss Miller told the court they had met at her sister’s home in the city and, as he calmly ate a sandwich, he had confessed in the kitchen to the killing.

“He said his girlfriend’s dead and she’s in his flat. I was in shock – I thought ‘what are you talking about?’